


Shine

by rainhat



Category: Shakespeare RPF | Elizabethan & Jacobean Theater RPF
Genre: Angst and Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-23
Updated: 2005-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23965279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainhat/pseuds/rainhat
Summary: May 1593, the day before Christopher Marlowe departs to Deptford.
Relationships: Christopher Marlowe/William Shakespeare
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maelipstick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maelipstick/gifts).



> I reproduce here the LJ note I slapped on to the top of this fic. "Randomly produced to blow off excess steam after studying for my Renaissance paper. At last it feels like I put sixteenth-century studies to good use. *g* I'll leave this public for a day or two before locking it. Pls to read and enjoy, and tell me what you think."
> 
> Well then!

::you were caught in the crossfire of childhood and stardom  
blown on the steel breeze  
come on you target for faraway laughter  
come on you stranger  
you martyr  
you legend  
and shine::

**London, May 1593.**

::dead of night::

“Marlowe.”

“…Marlowe? Kit? Kit.”

“Ssh,” Marlowe said. “I’m drinking.”

“I’ve had plenty of time to notice that,” Will said. “I think you should stop.”

“You think so much,” Marlowe said, emptying the last of the wine into his goblet and down his throat forthwith. “You think and think and think. You are a fool, Shakespeare.”

Will, torn between _Venus and Adonis_ and Kit Marlowe, ignored the burning in his fingers to write, and turned to look at Kit. 

He did not want to; Kit threw him out of course in ways that twisted Will’s insides uncomfortably. The unkempt hair and bruised face, the eyes that had grown furtive and hunted over the course of a single spring, these were not pleasant sights. Kit would not have them seen to; he made no attempt to hide his injuries from the public. Not that there was anything hidden. It seemed like all London was agog with the news of Marlowe’s arrest, torture and impending trial for betrayal, with the scandal of Marlowe’s atheism, with the rumour of Marlowe’s penchant for buggery. Will supposed there were some who would put two and two together if they found Kit hiding in his rooms, and some who would simply believe that William Shakespeare was standing by a friend in need. And all of them would agree with Kit and call Shakespeare a fool.

The world did not bother Will quite so much as Kit did. He would have agreed that it was foolish of him to come and lie low at his place, but for different reasons. Will, after all, knew that the Furies would find their object wherever he hid, and Kit had always carried his own set of them wherever he went. 

“ _Excrucior_ ,” Kit sighed.

“Don’t blaspheme,” Will said, turning back to scribble fast at the top of the page. Kit let the last of the wine roll out of his goblet, splattering the wood. Will bit his cheek in some impatience. He hated having the housekeeper in more than was strictly necessary.

“Your Catullus is alien to you, I see,” Kit snorted. 

Will refused to sigh or snap his quill.

“Your tongue loses wisdom when you’re drunk,” he pointed out very calmly, “You are not God, Marlowe, nor yet the son of God, even though I understand that right now you must seem like the best thing that happened to the world. Or to the London stage.”

“I _am_ the best thing that’s happened to the London stage!” Kit roared. The goblet in his hand dropped to the floor resonantly. Will expected it was relieved to be let go of, in its own insentient mineralesque way. Kit could get unpleasant when he was drunk. 

Not that Will strictly minded. Violence kept the pace of things up, after all - so long as it was not directed at him. But there was something else about a drunk Kit Marlowe, something far more dreadful. Then the gap between himself and his heroes lessened, and it was not a pretty sight at all. It was there now, welling up in his reddening eyes, the lost promise of someone great and beautiful and cruel. 

Will thought of Stephen Gosson and his cohorts, railing against the theatre as immoral and false, and thought too of how dangerous they were, making the theatre out to be a fiction so that the rest of the world would seem real. And was that not Marlowe all over, the man who pretended not to be Tamburlaine and Barabbas when he was separate from them only by time and place? 

It was not only that, though. The hero in Marlowe existed alongside this other man – this worthless fool who embarrassed himself time and again, regardless of whether he was among friends or out in the taverns where all London could point fingers at him and laugh. Will resented both Marlowes a little. He could himself be neither hero nor fool so successfully. Still he was thankful enough to have the honesty to admit this to himself. Honesty enough, too, to admit that watching such a vulnerable, conflicted man made his heart palpitate with an unknown ache. Kit was beautiful – more beautiful than his heroic Tartar or Jew, yes, and sharper than the quack he had made in his own image and dressed up in gaudy bitterness. What Faustus of ink or stage could capture Kit? 

And Will had an utter weakness for red hair and dark eyes, as truths went. 

He laid his quill down with a sigh, his own paper Adonis diminishing in appeal as he drew closer to Kit, sprawled sulkily on the recliner, his face turned deliberately from Will as Will knelt and ran his fingers gently through Kit’s curls. They snagged on a knot and Kit turned and yelped.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he whined irritably, and Will had to laugh this time. 

“It’s hard to stay angry with you for very long, you know,” he said. 

Kit did not reply. His eyes grew soft and sleepy as Will sat down beside the couch and continued to stroke his hair. He kissed Will’s palm, by and by, and whispered something like a thanks before he fell asleep.

Will sighed and raised himself off the floor, cursing as he realised some of the spilt wine had soaked into his britches. 

Will was not charmed by the practice of dying young. All Kit’s university friends were falling into the habit. Old Lyly was good for a few years, as was the ever-fastidious Nashe, but Peele, Greene; that utter bastard Kyd. They were drunk on life, educated as they all were, making a fair penny as wordwrights, thankful above everything that they weren’t forced to be clergymen just because they could hold a quill the right way. Will had to admit it had its merits in these uncertain times. London was a swill of disease, and the passing of the emergency made no significant difference to that general state of affairs. If it was a choice between alcoholism and the plague, then, like Kit's Wits, he’d take the wine all the way. 

The women, not so much, not since he’d suffered from that bout of syphilis. As for song – 

Will remembered his draft of Venus with a start. There were those in the theatre who said Shakespeare never blotted a line he wrote, which was all very well, but he’d just as rather not go down in history as the man who couldn’t afford blotters. 

He glanced out of the window at troubled midnight, and then back at Kit, his pale face framed against it, like – like a jewel, hanging in – in – 

Will gave up and returned to his writing.

* * *

::what light through yon window::

Kit had always thought Will Shakespeare was one of the most reserved men he knew, and it was proven when he discovered that Will cooked up verse even in bed.

“Wh-what – light – breaks yonder,” he gasped as Kit’s hands dove into his hair and tore at his shirt, sliding in to stroke a nipple, kissing the exposed flesh at Will’s throat. Would the man never give up and think straight for once?

“Shut up,” Kit whispered fiercely, nipping at Will’s ear and jaw. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

He had woken Will with his nightmare cries before dawn, and Will had set his quill down and frowned a little.

”What?” he had asked quietly, and Kit had not told him, could not tell him, for the words did not exist in this world to describe the feeling of being utterly alone, alone in knowing for oneself that there was no God, no entity that would stop the memories that murdered his sleep over and over. 

And Will had looked pained, for reasons Kit could fathom but not prove beyond reasonable doubt. But Will was always reserved in these matters, which made Kit feel even more alone, even more ashamed of being so frightened of himself. He’d reached for Will silently, because Will responded readily in body even when he kept his thoughts to himself, and Will had endured his hungry, stale kiss with a little laugh – it amazed Kit how Will found everything amusing – and asked him why he was always so horny the morning after a night of steady drinking. 

“The wine, of course,” Kit had answered, wiping his nose on Will’s sleeve. Will had his clothes washed more regularly than Kit. “Increases desire, decreases performance. A night’s sleep physics the latter, but not the former.”

“Never the former with you,” Will had murmured, and Kit had hated him for sounding older and patronising, and bitten him.

Will held on to Kit’s shoulders now, being taken from the bottom. Kit watched his face as it crinkled and contorted into a variety of masks, each one interesting and unpleasant and guarded in its own way. Will was not a handsome man, but there was something about his eyes – ageless eyes, now screwed shut in anxious concentration – that made Kit jealous and enthralled, the one following the other as it always did for him. It was the lure of what he could not have, what he should not have, what Will granted to him in stray moments like these. A night here, an afternoon there, no one to know; and more importantly, no one to care. Kit always wondered if Will cared himself, but even that morbid apprehension receded into nothing when Will held on to his shoulders and made a small, desperate sound and came, came because of Kit. 

Kit held onto him because that was what Kit did. 

Soon after they were satisfied, Will’s eyes fluttered shut, as they always did, his fingers clutched tight about the chain on Kit’s neck. 

“Are you asleep?” Kit asked loudly. Will winced a little. 

“No,” he said, his voice somewhat hushed. “Thinking.”

“For once, eh, Guilielmus?”

Will’s eyes flew open in annoyance. “Will you stop that?” he grumbled. 

“Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?” Kit murmured dramatically. Will paused in arranging the cushions around himself and shook his head. 

“Oh, excellent. The Canterbury charlatan, at it again."

“Look who’s talking!” Kit sputtered.

“Don’t get upset. It’s a good accent, anyway.”

“Much _you’ll_ know about accents,” Kit said, kissing the corner of his mouth.

“Too true. So perchance I do ask, why do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Hate and love, and be crucified for it. That is the translation, isn’t it?”

“I hate and I love.” Kit felt his soul rising in a flash of fire, the Latin blazing across his mind. “Why do I do it, you ask? I don’t know, but I feel it upon me, and I am crucified.”

Will was quiet. Kit felt a little guilty as he remembered needling him about his Latin the night before. He had always suspected him of being a little touchy on the subject, although Will being Will would say nothing about it, as he always - 

“You are too much like the sun,” Will said.

“What?”

“Too constant,” Will said, tracing an idle pattern on Kit’s chest. “Too fierce.”

“Oh. I thought you were comparing me to Apollo.”

Will smiled mysteriously and continued to write his poems on Kit’s skin.

“It isn’t so amusing,” Kit said, feeling very sour. “You’ve been saying that about all your absurd villains, I’ll bet."

"Kit."

"Well, I won’t be one of them. I wish I was – God knows everything would be simpler – but I’m not.”

Will went silent again. It was frustrating. He was very frequently silent in Kit’s company. It was like he entirely refused to argue with Kit. Kit’s lip curled. 

“Don’t, Kit,” Will said at last, so quietly that it could have been a whisper in Kit’s dreaming mind, a warning or a prophecy. “Don’t wish for it.”

“Why not?” Kit whispered back. “And why do you care?”

Will looked hurt for the briefest of moments, before he returned, “Why not?” back to Kit. 

“Will – ”

But Will’s eyes were shuttered, his hand on Kit’s shoulder loose. He didn't understand, and the sun wasn't quite up yet.

“So then, tell me what to do, Will,” Kit asked, hearing his voice break against Will’s walls of silence. “Since you are wise, and I am not.”

The hand curled and danced lightly along Kit’s jaw, up to his hair. Will always made Kit feel like a child.

“You want the world, and you want it your way,” Will said. “But can you have it?”

Kit thought about it as Will’s hand looped, curled about his neck, pulled him close for another warm kiss. He responded with reserve, but Will was persistent, and the kiss turned into a string of them.

“I don’t see why not,” he said when it seemed like the thread was broken. “Eventually.”

Will laughed. “For an ‘eventually’ you have to live long enough,” he said. “So I would tell you to live. It’s the best solution, in the long run.”

Kit smiled. “Is it I who am naïve, or you, Master Shakespeare?”

Will demanded another kiss at that. There was an odd sort of pleading in the curve of the mouth that settled against Kit’s.

Kit hadn’t really expected him to answer.

* * *

::bright morning::

“Where are you going now?” Will found it necessary to ask as Kit washed at the basin and shrugged into his doublet. 

“Must report to the shithouse. You’d think they’d have realised the obvious when they called themselves the Privy Council, wouldn’t you? Bastards."

He was bright now, and strong, moving with his usual brisk grace among the objects that cluttered Will’s rooms, picking up the things that belonged to him, or ones he needed. “Can't return immediately, either. Thence Deptford for me, I'm afraid. Things to do.”

“You’ll work on _Hero_ by the banks of the Thames, is it?”

Kit grinned a little wildly. “You can stop taunting me about that, Guilielmus, I’m going to pip you and your Venus to the post any which way.”

Will made a wry face, his hand already meandering off onto another sheet of parchment. _Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, already sick and pale with grief. What light through yon window breaks –_

Abruptly he stopped. “No matter,” he said, looking up at Kit, “I am still the better poet.”

“After Queen Mab’s through with you,” Kit laughed.

“Kit – be careful.”

“All right, all right. No need to be quite so motherly.”

Will pursed his lips and looked away. 

“ _Excelsior_ ,” Kit said, coming around. “To the best thing that’s ever happened to the London stage.” He kissed Will’s mouth and bit it softly before standing upright. “I speak of myself, of course.”

That was Kit all over. He could leave nothing unresolved. 

Will smiled and turned back to _Venus and Adonis_. The idea of a man who shamed the rising sun plagued his poetry all day.

**Author's Note:**

> These notes are also from 2005. 
> 
> \+ Liberties have been taken in terms of timelines and other things. No disrespect was intended, and I'm sure two of the biggest charlatan scholars in history would understand.
> 
> \+ _Hero:_ Hero and Leander.
> 
> \+ The Catullus poem: _Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?_  
>  nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. -- I hate and I love. Why do I do it, you might ask?  
> I don’t know, but it keeps happening to me, and I burn up.
> 
> \+ Peele, Nashe, Greene, Lyly: part of the circle known as the University Wits (of whom one was Kit), the first educated secular playwrights to set the Elizabethan stage on FIYARRRR.
> 
> \+ 'Guilielmus' is the name on Will's birth cert.
> 
> \+ For a biography of Kit, the most magnetic and volatile of a string of magnetic and volatile writers of the Renaissance, look [here](http://www.marlowe-society.org/christopher-marlowe/life/). Will's bio is [here](http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/).
> 
> \+ The epigraph is from Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond (I-IV)" [This writer, in 2020: GROAN]
> 
> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> —
> 
> For lipstick, then and now.


End file.
